Worms developer admits AI and online problems
It’s not often that developers go public on admitting cockups in their software. We all remember how long it took for Infinity Ward to mildly confirm that ’some players’ had problems with the game’s multiplayer before patching it after a ridiculous four months. The Worms developers deserve some cheers then for publicly stating that they screwed up on their AI timing.
“Please hang on 2 minutes while I calculate how to shoot you.”
Although the final game is certainly worth your bucks, many players including yours truly were surprised or even disgruntled at the ridiculous time the computer opponents take to do their thing. Being old enough to remember the Amiga original, one could hardly miss the fact that our triple core simultaneous multithreading 3.2Ghz powerhouse console takes more time to aim a bazooka than 1994’s 7.14Mhz MC68000 processor, today commonly used in washing machines. Users complaining about this on the Xbox.com forums quickly met a Team 17 representative throwing around some jargon about how Artificial Intelligence is essentially really dumb and has to cater for millions of possibilities, but after some time he was forced to retract that again:
Okay, this is probably the most embarrassing post I’ve ever had to write… [… the developer] stated that it’s taking as long on the Xbox 360 as it did on the PSP and indicated that this is not right. “Oh, dear,” I though, “that can’t be so at all, he must be mistaken.” He isn’t. It is. *sigh*. It’s been overlooked in the development process, but all the timings for the A.I. are *still* based on the PSP processor. Although it is not, and never has been, deliberately slow, it is, on the 360, slower than it should be. Mea culpa and bloody embarrased about it too.
Although the mistake is obviously incredibly stupid, we bow down to the folks for immediately having the balls to admit it. And hey, they’re trying to get it patched along with the online connectivity problems too:
I am not promising a fix, but there is, I think, a patch coming out for the online problems: I hope we can get this problem fixed in it too.
Three cheers again for Team 17, and another one for DouggyD for the pointer.
Did you know, sometimes the enemy will teleport above the map making it impossible to kill.
I hate ranked match. When all your worms are dead, you still have to stay in the game and watch other people which seems to take ages. If you leave it ends the game for everyone and you get a negative ranked match score. They need an update which lets you quit out of a ranked match once all your worms are dead.
I’ve noticed that the replays don’t always show what just happened - one of my replays played out a completely different senario
I have also noticed this on several occassions, very strange indeed. And to think that it took months of quality testing to get this game out to us…
Worms needed more development time
i blame worm man for rushing them
we still want worms! Yeah it pisses me off too but come on….still one of the best games ever. And big props for not blaming something other than human error.
Yes, its good that they “finally” came around… but what happened to testing? how do you ship your game, and you are so certain of something NOT being a problem, and then it turns out you were wrong? do these guys even play the game before it goes on live?
I’m not trying to be a jerk, but the last few years of xbox gaming have been DOMINATED by lack of testing.
i think its comin down to a lack of communication between microsoft and developer.developers are given the tools to make xbla games then they hand it over for microsoft to test.microsoft find a problem and hand it back to developers to fix it.the game gets delayed while developers struggle to fix the problem.microsoft sit on there asses waiting for a developer who’s inexperienced with xboxlive to fix a problem that microsoft could probably fix in no time.
well, I guess this is what happens when things get rushed out the the market.
Problems with a rush job? Big surprise!
Thing is, it wasn’t rushed. Have you forgotten the wait we just had?
They better fix it. That is lame
Kudos to them for admitting their mistakes and for trying to fix it rather soon. It’s very painful to see how games go months and months without getting fixed, ala Small Arms…
the game is all around boring,
I find worms to be a lot of things. But boring just isn’t one of them.
yeah I agree - it’s not boring, but I do want to see different backgrounds and perhaps map layouts now!!!
Hey, I’m famous! Cheers guys, you kept me up to date with all of the Worms news before launch, so I just wanted to return the favour….
An update is underway.
There’s a few things being sorted out, the AI speed is one of them - this was simply an ommission as the people doing the testing just didn’t think anything was wrong as there were no actual bugs as such found. Oh hum.
Other things like the CPU teleporting above the border have been found and fixed as well as about half a dozen small things here and there.
We’ll work with Microsoft to get this through test and certification as soon as we can.
As ever, once a game is live and being played by many thousands of players, it’s massively multiplies the chances of finding obscure problems with the game & logic/mechanics. Some things may seem obvious when they’re focused upon but along side all the other complexities of the game, it’s akin to finding a needle in a haystack. Once we can easily recreate the problem, we can usually fix it.
Thanks for the update on the ..err.. update…
Glad to hear that this may be included, but for me the slow AI is by no means a deal breaker, small annoyance maybe. Personally, I would be more happy to see the obvious bugs fixed and all the rest of you time spent on giving us more maps and weapons. Would you be able to tell us if there is anything like that expected in future updates or downloadable content?
Also, what is up with the replay not matching what actually happened in the game? Sorry, so many questions, I’m just excited to finally have Worms. Oh man, that sounded just wrong…
A ton of DLC is on the way, hopefully starting soon with new themes and tons of voices, but additional weapons are unlikely for a gamut of good reasons (all explained on our forum).
None of the problems with the game right now are “show stoppers” as such, but we’re keen to ensure that the game plays as smoothly as possible on Live.
We haven’t managed to reliably recreate a situation where the replay didn’t synchronise properly and that hadn’t been spotted in test for half a year. Given the amount of games going on, it’s a very very rare occurance.
Very impressed that the Dev’s for Team17 not only admit their problems but then go on to surf community websites and answer questions and update us with what’s going on. Some of you guys should go work for Volition….lol…What a disaster that was.
The biggest problem I have with Worms is the fact that my wife and I cant play online games against our friends without her haveing a gold account. This is shit and needs to be fixed.
Strictly speaking that’s not a bug that needs “fixing” but we appreciate your point. This feature wasn’t requested by XBLA and as such wasn’t supported given the offline social multiplayer play.
Besides the comment I made above, I think the game is great. I’m glad to see it back in all its 2D glory and like in the days of the Dreamcast, my friends and I can’t get enough.
Spadge: Any idea if the 4 custom team limit per Xbox is going to be upped?